… Dr. Aaron Levine, an assistant
professor of public policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology, examined
more than 100 egg donation ads from 63 college newspapers. He found that a
quarter of them offered compensation exceeding the $10,000 maximum cited in
voluntary guidelines issued by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine,
a professional association.

The guidelines state that payments
of $5,000 or more above and beyond medical and related expenses “require
justification” and that payments above $10,000 “are not appropriate.” Ads in
newspapers at Harvard, Princeton and Yale
promised $35,000 for donors, Dr. Levine found, while an ad placed on behalf of
an anonymous couple in The Brown Daily Herald offered $50,000 for “an
extraordinary egg donor.”

“The concern is that some young
women may choose to donate against their own best interests,” Dr. Levine said.
“They’ll look at the money on offer and will overlook some of the risks.”

The study noted the possibility
that the ads represented a “bait and switch” strategy, with large offers
primarily designed to lure donors but with prices negotiated downward once they
respond.

In addition to limiting
compensation, the society’s guidelines forbid paying additional fees to egg
donors for specific traits. But the study found that every 100-point difference
in a university’s average SAT scores was correlated with an increase of more
than $2,000 in the fees advertised for potential egg donors in the campus
newspaper.